ELA Conf

Earlier this year, Joni Trythall retweeted something about a new tech conference, ELA Conf, to empower women to pursue leadership roles. There was just something (re: ) about the conference that got me excited, and suddenly I found myself emailing the conference (not even realizing that Joni was on the other end):

We spent the next several months connecting every other week on Google Hangouts and soon every day on Slack. We researched, planned, tweeted, emailed, networked, emoji’d, and stayed up late. Soon the website had ticket sales, a call for proposals, speakers, sponsors, a venue, and at long last, an agenda!

Over the weekend, we had the conference and it was a huge success. Our attendees were excited and eager to learn, and our speakers were fearless and eager to share their stories.

By the end of the conference, we had a community. To keep it going, we opened our ELA Conf Slack where we have channels for jobs, mentorships, talk proposals, community, and more. A place where we can talk about what’s ahead, but also what’s going on with our lives.

A part of me hopes that we’re actually making it harder for these women to think about leaving tech or even executing on it. After all, your friends are all here at ELA Conf, we’re listening, and we want you to succeed.

ELA Conf is one of the things that I’m most proud and honored to have worked on, and I can’t believe that I got to be a part of it just from sending one little email.